I have been spending some time recently working with the Windows Phone 7 development tools and thought I’d start blogging more about writing applications for the forthcoming Windows Phone 7 platform. I was asked a question this morning about how you might...

Within the Microsoft.Phone.Tasks namespace there are several types that allow you to interact with the Windows Phone 7 marketplace. We’ll explore these types and see how you can search the Windows Phone 7 marketplace programmatically. Let’s start with...

I’ll be speaking on August 31st at the Sacramento .net Users Group about code generation with Visual Studio 2010 . We have had access to various techniques for code generation for almost as long as most of us have been writing software, although how many...

I have been an active user of Internet Explorer since its initial release and recently I have been exploring the Windows Internet Explorer Platform Preview , designed to allow developers to kick the tires and see how the next version of Internet Explorer...

In early 2004 while searching the Internet for a tool that would assist our team in performing peer code reviews I stumbled upon a compare and merge application that has since become an integral part of the developer experience for me and many developers...

Imagine you have just generated some code using a code generation technique, wouldn’t it be really cool to then programmatically call the C# language compiler and generate assemblies from the generated code? Let’s imagine we used an Xslt transformation...

Are you passionate about software development and discussing new and emerging technologies with fellow developers? As a Developer Evangelist within Microsoft’s Developer & Platform Evangelism team you’ll have the opportunity to be immersed in new...

Visual Studio Snippets is an open source collection of code snippets for the C# programming language, providing StyleCop compliant versions of the 38 code snippets that ship within Visual Studio along with 44 additional StyleCop compliant snippets. You...

Steven Sinofsky, President, Windows and Windows Live Division, announced today from Japan’s Windows 8 Dev Days that the Windows 8 Release Preview will be available during the first week of June. /via @BuildWindows8 As always, if you’re interested in more...

In my blog post entitled Testing the Update Process for Windows Phone Apps published last night we discussed the need for testing the update process for your Windows Phone applications. In this blog post we explore how to debug the update process for...

In my former life as an architect at Intel Corporation and a Microsoft MVP , I used to blog on the Intel Software Network about Microsoft Developer technologies. On April 6th 2009 I wrote a blog post discussing the need for a Team Foundation Server Express...

A couple of years ago wrote a blog post entitled Visual Studio 2010 – Darker Shades of Blue Theme where I posted a custom settings file for Visual Studio 2010 . With the release of SQL Server 2012 you can also import and export settings and this morning...

After a Windows Phone application has been in the marketplace for sometime there will invariably be several reviews of the application, ranging from one to five stars with optional remarks associated with the review. While there are users who will write...

Brandon Watson wrote a blog post this morning that should be music to the ears of all Windows Phone developers, announcing the availability of the Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta 2 and also how you can install Windows Phone “Mango” on retail Windows...

Any developer will tell you that debugging applications in production environments presents them with some unique challenges and applications on Windows Phone are no different.  With the new version of the AppHub developers portal debugging exceptions...

Today, in New York City, Andy Lees announced the next major release of Windows Phone, previously codenamed “Mango”, to the world.  We’re excited to release the Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta and would encourage mobile developers to download...

Since SQL Server 2005 we have had the ability to write User Defined Types (UDT's) and User Defined Aggregates (UDA's) etc. that are then executed by the .net framework within the SQL Server process. Given that the .net framework 4.0 introduced a new version...

CodePlex.Snippets is a collection of code snippets for C# developers that enhances the core code snippets developers use today to ensure that they conform, where appropriate, to static code analysis and StyleCop rules. CodePlex.Snippets also provides...

Got a truly awesome Windows Experience Index (WEI) on your PC or planning on purchasing a new PC or even upgrading an existing PC? You should then check out WEI Share “We Share” - A Community of Windows Experience Index Scores, that allows you score your...

While on vacation in Florida with my family I attended the NASA Astronaut Training Experience with my dad and was able to do two things that I have wanted to do since watching the movie Space Camp in 1986, ride the multi-axis trainer and fly a full size...

Since the most fundamental program ever written it seems some architects and software developers feel the need to demonstrate, what they believe, is their superior software engineering skills by designing to an additional unspecified requirement. The...

I’ll be attending the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, CA from September 13 to September 15th and will be blogging about the conference and some of the sessions I’ll be attending. Microsoft will be presenting, alongside Intel engineers, in several...

Since the beginning of flight school I have been a little bit of a weather nerd and so as soon as I saw this weather phenomenon from my backyard today I had to run back inside and get the camera, hopefully you’ll agree that this is one cool cloud. I initially...

Visual Studio 2010 provides 38 code snippets for the C# developer, while Visual Studio Snippets provides enhanced versions of those base snippets along with 31 additional code snippets in the October 2010 Visual Studio Snippets Release . Within the Visual...

On May 18th 2010 come along to the Microsoft Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View, CA and learn about, and implement Web API’s using, the Open Data Protocol . In addition to presentations you’ll also have hands-on time to explorer the concepts presented...